Blog: Rabbit, Rabbit: January – Happy New Year

Double greetings of good cheer, good luck, and prosperity today – Rabbit, Rabbit and Happy New Year! All of us at pixels2Pages hope that you make 2014 a fantastic year! We will be doing our best to bring you more information, motivation, and inspiration this year and we encourage you to make it a habit to stop by the pixels2Pages website every day. One of the books on my reading list this month is The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg (thanks, Carolyn!). You already know I’m on a quest to lose weight (SERIOUSLY) this year, and I expect that when I incorporate the power of habit into my life, great things will happen. Have you purchased your FitBit yet? Are you wearing it and walking? We’ve set up an event for those of you who want to go from Sitter2Fitter. Or Fat2Fit. Or you just want to MOVE IT!! For FitBit users – we’ve also set up a public, invitation-only FitBit Community (called Sitter2Fitter). If you’d like to join, email me at jan@pixels2Pages.net from the email address associated with your FitBit account. What do you say we make it a habit to meet here at p2P and on our p2P Facebook page every day? If so, here’s what you’ll find:

Day2Day

We will be incorporating our Day2Day Facebook page into our pixels2Pages Facebook page starting this week. Every Sunday, we’ll be posting the Day2Day theme for the week on our timeline banner, and we’ll be putting those images in an album on our Facebook page. If you have been posting regularly (or whenever!) on our Day2Day page, we invite you to continue posting your pages on the p2P page. We will be putting your pages in a gallery on the website, and even if you are not participating in the Day2Day project, you can be inspired by our members who will be posting their weekly pages. If you don’t know what the Day2Day project is, watch THIS VIDEO and join us! Coming soon, we will be offering “The Daily Files 2014” as a kit that can be purchased from the Panstoria store. If you love our 7-opening Blueprints and you miss Day2Day Pixie Dust, this kit is for you! We will let you know the minute it is available for purchase!

Have you noticed our new shout outs on our Facebook page? Every day, we are changing our cover image to reflect the website offering for that day. It’s a quick way to see what’s new at a glance; while you’re on Facebook – stop by!

Coming Soon – It’s Crop Time!

We know you love a good virtual crop, especially in January! Mark your calendars now for our week-long crop – it will be from Monday, 6 January, to Sunday, 12 January. It’s the perfect time to finish up projects, get started on new ones, and to make p2P a habit!

New in December – more p2P Gift Memberships!

Gift Memberships – Looking for the perfect gift for your scrapbook-loving friend or relative? If you have a friend who’s been reluctant to take the p2P plunge, maybe you could nudge them along by giving a two-month (or more!) pixels2Pages membership. We have three different gift memberships available now:

2 months for $33

6 months for $85

12 months for $165

These memberships do not start until the recipient activates them, and they will not renew automatically. They must be activated within two months of purchase, so plan accordingly. The giver will purchase the membership via PayPal, and will enter the recipient’s information there. A message will be automatically and immediately sent to the recipient (no surprises!) and then it’s up to the lucky person to set up the new account. You can even purchase one for yourself!

December at p2P

As always, we have something new and interesting for you almost every day. Here’s a quick recap of the December posts.

Monday – Challenges: This month’s Challenge and Video Theme revolved around the ARRANGE RIBBON. Did you try something new? If you haven’t already, post your completed Challenge pages on our Facebook page. We love seeing how you interpret these challenges created by Justine, Kim, Mary, Kerrianne, and Janice. We’ve made a change that we hope will make it easier for you to find the challenge you need – check out the drop down menu (in the blue bar). You’ll see that challenges have been categorized into themes!

183: Mosaic Borders

184: Arrange It

185: Reflective Backgrounds

186: Copycat Borders

187: Sliced Titles

Tuesday – Tips: Our Tips were awesome last month – and guess what – we are categorizing them to make them even easier to find! So far, we’ve completed the SBC/Artisan tips, and we’ll be working on more. If you’re not in the habit of reading the Tips, you’re missing out. Everything you always needed to know, but didn’t know who to ask! The answer? You don’t have to ask – with your p2P membership, the answers are at your fingertips, only a search or a tag away!

Wednesday – Blueprints: Blueprints for December were created for you by Anne, Shelley, Kerrianne, and Mary. According to our inbox, most p2P members are loving that ALL of the monthly Blueprints are available in one easy download – and that we’re still offering 11″ x 8.5″ pages! If you are not sold on the ‘all at once’ download idea, you can use Wednesdays as a day to go to the website and look through our Blueprint gallery for ideas. Or use that week’s Blueprint and post your pages! And we had a special bonus gift for you especially for the holidays – don’t miss it!

Remember to save and print the Blueprint Checklists for your reference! (Note: Checklist for January will be added later this week.)

Thursday – Videos:Lights, camera, action! We’re trying something new this year – each month, we’ll be focusing on one ribbon in Artisan. As mentioned earlier, the December ‘star’ is the Arrange ribbon, as you may have noticed in these videos. Sit back and enjoy – then make a page and post it for us! Thanks to Janice, Kim, Shelley, and Jan for these fantastic videos.

Video Tidbits: Flip for Embellishments, Seeing Things in Black & White, How to Be a Groupie

We’ve gotten lots of feedback about the mega monthly downloads, most of it overwhelmingly positive; however, some of you miss coming to the website on Wednesdays and Fridays to download your goodies. We do a shout out on our Facebook page as if the Blueprint or Pixie Dust had been released that day, along with posting some sample pages for you. So, if you’re missing weekly downloads, try this: download the monthly collection and save it to your computer, but wait until ‘release day’ to open and unzip the appropriate Blueprint or Pixie Dust. We know it’s not exactly the same, but it could work! And remember that now we’re posting our blog posts on the days that would have had Blueprints and Pixie Dust posts.

Ongoing offerings at p2P

Free Trial – A couple of months ago, we made some changes to our Free Trial, as we’ve added in several free tutorials for Panstoria Artisan and Historian users. The new tutorials added are:

This Free Trial is open to anyone, does not require registration, and may be viewed for as long as you want. We’d love to hear what you think! If you have friends undecided about joining p2P, send them to our free trial so they can try before they buy.

Back2Basics: We are loving seeing beginners and seasoned Artisan and SBC users learning things in Back2Basics! Even if you are a veteran digital scrapper, we encourage you to take time to review these lessons. I can almost guarantee you will learn SOMETHING! Keep in mind that if you are self-taught (or were, at the beginning) you may be doing something the hard way. The Back2Basics course has been revamped to include training on both Artisan and SBC. And, just a friendly reminder – beginning today, 1 January 2014, you’ll need to purchase a separate Back2Basics membership if you’d like access to this training, unless you are an APPO member.

FAQs, Help! and News: If these sections aren’t the first places you go when you have a question, they should be! Almost all of your questions about memberships, PayPal, and MUCH, MUCH MORE are answered here, and you won’t have to wait for us to answer your emails.

We’ve added a new FAQ section all about Panstoria, Artisan, Historian, Digital Artwork, and the Panstoria Print Shop. Please have a look there if you have any questions – it may save you lots of time and you just may find the answers to your questions.

Annual Membership Holders: Is Your PayPal Information Correct? NOTE: If you purchased an annual membership last January, it will be AUTOMATICALLY renewing this month. If you do not wish to continue your membership, then YOU must cancel payments BEFORE their due date. Remember that we have a no refund policy. Check your renewal date by logging into your PayPal account.

Beginning today, 1 January 2014, prices will increase to $15 per month and $160 per year (this is a $5 decrease in price for the annual membership over our previously announced price increase!) for all Pixels2Pages memberships purchased (new) and/or renewed.

Please have a look at our FAQs (especially if you have membership and/or PayPal questions) before using the Contact Us button.

News regarding our industry partners

APPO: I’d like to remind APPO (Association of Personal Photo Organizers) members that they can sign up for a free Back2Basics membership by emailing us at info@pixels2Pages.net and letting us know they’ve agreed to our Terms of Use and supplying us with a p2P user name that is not an email address, and listing their APPO ID number.

The APPO National Conference will be held February 12 – 15, 2014, in Dallas, Texas, and pixels2Pages will be there! We hope you will, too! HERE is a link to the program details and HERE is the link to register. See you there!

Panstoria Digital Content: We are so excited about all the news coming from Panstoria! Have you heard about all the new designers who will be selling content through the Panstoria store? One of our own Featured Designers, Janet Carr, will be offering her Little Feet Designs content, and we’re thrilled to see Cottage Arts represented there as well. The founder of Cottage Arts, Michelle Shefveland, was instrumental in helping SBC get off the ground at Creative Memories a number of years ago. Our friend Laurie Callison will also be selling her wares there too.

More awesome content made its way to the Panstoria store from Down Under. Half of the p2P team (Kerrianne, Janice, Shelley, Mary, and Jan) met with the good folks at KaiserCraft in March 2012, and we’ve been working hard to find a way to share their beautiful artwork with you. Several KaiserCraft kits are available now – you’ve probably seen some of them in our sample pages. Remember that if there are Creative Memories kits that you missed or still want, you only have until 27 March 2014 to purchase them. We would appreciate it if you would make your digital artwork purchases from our affiliate link – click HERE to do that.

We’re also hearing great things from members who have ordered from the Panstoria Print Shop. It’s always fun when members post pictures of their latest creations and give positive reviews! But as with any new endeavor, there have been a few bumps along the way – sometimes it’s not as quick and easy to get through to the Panstoria Help Line as it was to get assistance from Creative Memories, since technical support (especially live tech support) is very expensive and almost unheard of for online companies. If you have any concerns about your Panstoria Print Shop order, there is a phone number on the shipping label for you to call. If you are trying to print and have questions or problems, please check these resources FIRST:

New Affiliates: We’ve been busy researching a number of companies whose products and services we’d like to share with you – we are now affiliates for Dazzling Reflections and Fitbit. These companies all offer products or services used by all or some of us at pixels2Pages, and we don’t like keeping good news to ourselves! As affiliates for these companies, we will provide you with information about their products and services, along with links and/or coupon codes for you to use if you are interested in purchasing something from those companies. Click the links below for more information about each of these products:

January Calendar

Download and print this month’s calendar of events, courtesy of Tameka. Mark items off as you watch, read, or download, and you won’t miss a thing!

Have you noticed that we’ve included a handy link for the calendar on each page of the website? Any time you are on pixels2Pages, the monthly calendar is at your fingertips, along with lots of other good things!

4 Responses to Blog: Rabbit, Rabbit: January – Happy New Year

Shooey! That was one heckuva rabbit, rabbit Jan! So much to catch up on. SO MUCH to be excited about for 2014!! Thank you p2P Team for all that you do, much of which happens behind the scenes and usually at crazy hours. You are loved for all of it! LYMI J